Confessions of An Ex-Tumblr Preteen
If you’re anything like me, you spent a majority of your formative teenage years on the internet. Whether it was YouTube, Reddit, or, in my case, Tumblr, it heavily influenced who we are today. While we all went through embarrassing phases in our lives, one that I endured sticks with me: my “grunge” phase. You could recognize it from a mile away: black Doc Martens, American Apparel skater skirts, an unhealthy obsession with Arctic Monkeys and The 1975 and deleteriously long hours spent perfecting my Tumblr aesthetic. Looking back, spending my childhood on a website meant for adults definitely contributed to my overwhelmingly unnecessary teen angst. I idolized the cool girls who owned Alt-J records and went to the city to take cheap polaroid photos of their overpriced iced coffees. It was my goal, and that of many other impressionable girls, to carry ourselves with a simultaneously haughty and mysteriously chill attitude so as to seem more mature. Now, when I get compliments such as, “You act so old for your age!” I know exactly why. While the clothes I wore were predominantly black and the photos I centered my entire personality around were mostly unhealthy and unattainable, the music that I listened to is what truly made me the person I am now.
As I scrolled down my Tumblr feed passing fake-deep photos of girls with thigh gaps and stills of Evan Peters from the latest episode of American Horror Story, I saw that all of the cool people listened to alternative music. There were constant posts rejecting the conformity and monotony of pop music, suggesting that “real music” was more than Carly Rae Jepsen--or whatever one-hit-wonder was popular back then. That mindset definitely kickstarted my superiority complex concerning music and showed me that music was more than something to listen to; it had clothing styles, personalities and interests to match. Whether it was me searching for a place to belong at a young age or the ever-enticing sentiment of being “not like other girls,” I followed suit in the alternative world nonetheless.
Tumblr’s built-in music player allowed me to hear songs like Arctic Monkey’s “Fluorescent Adolescent” and “505” for the first time. My naivety was at an all-time high when I was twelve, having never kissed a boy or even gone near someone of the opposite gender. So, lyrics like “In my imagination, you're waiting, lying on your side / With your hands between your thighs” were nothing more than poetry to my innocent ears. That was the irony of my Tumblr phase; I was grasping at straws trying to find an identity and ended up choosing one suited for people in their early adulthood years. I was a piece meant for a Barbie-themed puzzle trying to fit into a Cards Against Humanity box. I would listen to “Happy Little Pill” by Troye Sivan on repeat and still did not understand that it was referring to the fact that people use drugs to cope with mental health issues. I would blast “Car Radio” by Twentyone Pilots and try so hard to identify with the lyrics that I fell into the persona that I was trying to portray, searching everywhere for a reason to feel sad.
Well, all of the cool people I see on Tumblr are depressed and curse the world that they live in, so I should, too. All of those cool bands I listen to sing about drugs and sex and no one understanding them, so I guess no one understands me either.
My friends and I began an invisible competition: who could be the coolest, the most famous on Tumblr, the most grunge, the most “not like other girls,” the saddest? The more I lied to myself and believed that I fit the persona that The Neighbourhood and Bleachers projected and the more I stalked Tumblr to see how I could dress more “grunge,” the more I saw what I was becoming. I was a phony, a poser. I was growing up, and I was realizing what the music I listened to really meant. I began to fear what adulthood held for me and if it was really as depressing and scary as all these songs made it out to be: “You’re too mean, I don’t like you / Fuck you, anyway / You make me want to scream at the top of my lungs / It hurts but I won’t fight you / You suck anyway, you make me want to die” (“Afraid”, The Neighborhood).
But then, a switch flipped. As I entered 8th grade and then freshman year, I learned to shape the music that I listened to around my life, rather than the other way around. I began to listen to bands that allowed me to find solace in their lyrics, rather than artists who made me feel like I had to conform to their songs’ words. Modern Baseball, Cage the Elephant, Tame Impala, all allowed me to express myself as to who I truly was, not as a sad pre-teen who based their entire personality off of posed black-and-white pictures of girls wearing Adidas Superstars.
In the end, I don’t completely regret my grunge phase or the weird pictures and memories that came from it. While I may have some slight emotional scarring from the pro-mental disorder Tumblr era, I now have a music taste and fashion sense that represents me, not the people I see on the Internet. We’re all products of our experiences, each memory woven into the ever-expansive quilt that is you. So, rather than dragging mine around penitently, I choose to wear it like a Queen’s mantle--or, at least, I try. Sometimes, carrying the weight of knowing that you genuinely enjoyed listening to Melanie Martinez in 2015 can get a little hard.